The most sickening hunt I have ever seen.

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm not sure how the question can be answered when people have a tendancy to put different values on domesticated animals' lives vs wild.

Of course it can be answered. All he has to do is demonstrate that the objective worth of stray dogs and cats are more than bears such that it is wrong to kill and skin the former for fun and bragging rights, but alright to do so to the latter. That is, why is it wrong to chop off a dogs head and stick it on the wall, but not a bears?

[Alferd Packer]

I'm not sure how the question can be answered when people have a tendancy to put different values on domesticated animals' lives vs wild.

Of course it can be answered. All he has to do is demonstrate that the objective worth of stray dogs and cats are more than bears such that it is wrong to kill and skin the former for fun and bragging rights, but alright to do so to the latter. That is, why is it wrong to chop off a dogs head and stick it on the wall, but not a bears?

Would that be that stray dogs and cats are domesticated animals and, provided they are given appropriate care, attention, and training, can become pets again and provide comfort and joy to an individual or family? After all, the average bear is not domesticated.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I'm not sure how the question can be answered when people have a tendancy to put different values on domesticated animals' lives vs wild.

Of course it can be answered. All he has to do is demonstrate that the objective worth of stray dogs and cats are more than bears such that it is wrong to kill and skin the former for fun and bragging rights, but alright to do so to the latter. That is, why is it wrong to chop off a dogs head and stick it on the wall, but not a bears?

Would that be that stray dogs and cats are domesticated animals and, provided they are given appropriate care, attention, and training, can become pets again and provide comfort and joy to an individual or family? After all, the average bear is not domesticated.

A stray dog or cat that is an adult amd was born stray will probably (maybe exceptions exist) never become a suitable pet.

[LadyTevar]

Would that be that stray dogs and cats are domesticated animals and, provided they are given appropriate care, attention, and training, can become pets again and provide comfort and joy to an individual or family? After all, the average bear is not domesticated.

A stray dog or cat that is an adult and was born stray will probably (maybe exceptions exist) never become a suitable pet.

Actually, Aly, exceptions abound.

Two good friends of mine found a feral cat under their porch and took her in. "Scooter" (the first week with them she had a full week of diarrhea) gifted them with a litter of kittens within the month, but still took nearly six months before she'd come to them for pets and comfort. Scooter turned out to be an ideal mother-cat, taking in a total of 3 litters (13 kittens) as a string of cat poisonings hit the neighborhood. On top of that, she hunted for my friends, bringing them field mice, voles, shrews, and even chipmunks. Scooter would stand over the rodent and watch my friends to make sure they picked it up and took it inside with them. If they just tossed it back in the yard, Scooter would fetch it back and yowl scoldingly at them until they took it inside. We all figured Scooter thought my friends were kittens and needed fed more.

I have another friend who volunteers in an animal shelter. Her job is basic domestication of the feral cats they bring in. She feeds them, plays with them, gets them used to friendly human contact, and then celebrates whenever one of 'her cats' gets adopted. She will admit not all cats can be adopted, and since her shelter is a kill shelter she's lost a few of 'her cats', but she's managed to get a good ratio of saved cats.

So, it is possible for a Feral Cat to become a great pet.

There is a large difference between Feral and Wild, Aly. Yes, Ferals can be dangerous because a lot of them have lost the fear of Man (feral pigs, feral dogs), but Ferals also can be rehabilitated because the domestication process has changed it fundimentally.

Do we have to re-domesticate every newborn animal? Every puppy, every kitten, every cow? No. Due to centuries of domestication, they are no longer Wild, even when they've gone Feral. That Wildness has been breed out of them, and a tendency towards human dominance bred in.

Bears don't have that. Great Cats don't have that. Circus animals are not domesticated, despite generations born in captivity. Recall Siegfred & Roy's tragic accident with one of their tigers, one that had been hand-reared and well-trained for their act. Whatever Humans did to domesticate the Dog, Cat, Cow, and every other farm animal didn't work on the larger predators, and by now we should know it won't ever work because we've had centuries of pre-history to get it done, plus all the current historical ages.

So... Feral doesn't equal Wild. Feral cats will re-domesticate safely, while even a trained Bear has to be watched carefully or it will cause harm (accidentally or not).

[haard]

Why is it wrong to have a dog head on the wall?

Now I have no trophies despite being a hunter, since I think they are an ugly way of bragging of kills (and I cannot see other than a corpse on a wall - ew). Still, I can see no difference putting a dead dog for display than putting any other animal there.

As to the skinning and mutilation - what do the bear care? If killed, it should be killed swiftly. What you do to the corpse... meh.

There's nothing 'fair' about hunting - it's not like the deer is coming to get you. That being said, what was shown in the video was slaughter more than hunting. While that bear slaughter does not earn anybody any bragging rights, and it's disgraceful that they cannot do it quick and (relatively) painless, I have no objections on the principle of slaughter at the butcher's, so why this?

[Lagmonster]

And if you go out specifically looking, then you yourself are putting yourself in that position.

Yeah, but that wasn't what I was addressing. Independently of the hunting debate, we were talking about the bears trusting people because they'd been around campers and fly fishermen so often, and Aly said that people run the risk of being bear food just by being in Alaska. Nobody said that the hunters' risk is the same as the campers' risk.

You haven't answered the question. If someone goes out and kills a stray dog, then mutilates its body and keeps its head and skin, we call them psychos. However, you are supposing that going out and killing a bear, then mutilating its body and keeping its head and skin is somehow OK?

You didn't say anything about hunting stray dogs, asshole. You compared a deranged kid killing domesticated animals in suburbia to licensed sport hunting, and asked why one is a psycho and the other is a sportsman. The difference is motive; sport hunting is understood to carry a profit motive, that is placing value on the trophy as, say, decoration or proof of skill. Killing a stray dog just to watch something suffer and die carries the motive of a plain old fascination with killing things, which makes most people squeamish.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Why is it wrong to have a dog head on the wall?

Now I have no trophies despite being a hunter, since I think they are an ugly way of bragging of kills (and I cannot see other than a corpse on a wall - ew). Still, I can see no difference putting a dead dog for display than putting any other animal there.

As to the skinning and mutilation - what do the bear care? If killed, it should be killed swiftly. What you do to the corpse... meh.

There's nothing 'fair' about hunting - it's not like the deer is coming to get you. That being said, what was shown in the video was slaughter more than hunting. While that bear slaughter does not earn anybody any bragging rights, and it's disgraceful that they cannot do it quick and (relatively) painless, I have no objections on the principle of slaughter at the butcher's, so why this?

I would ask an equivalent question. If you mutilate someone's body, do they care? While the act itself is not immoral under some ethical systems, it certainly at the very least speaks to the character of those commiting the act. Hell, when native alaskans killed (and used every part of) an animal they had elaborate rituals showing the dead aninmal respect, thanking it for giving up its life so they might live.

At least you are consistent though.

There are really large differences between this, and a clean kill, even in a factory farm (Appalling living conditions aside) The first is that we created through selective breeding pigs, cows, sheep, chickens etc. They do actually exist for our use. A bear or a moose does not. It exists for its own sake.

The second difference is that the kill in a farm usually involves decapitation or a pneumatic spike through the skull. It is kinda hard to bring down a bear unless you are using a a very very large calibre rifle. If hunting other things, it is very difficult to kill the animal outright as well. it suffers. And under a utilitarian calculation your want for venison in your freezer, when there are other sources of "pain free" meat does not outweigh that suffering. If you can consistently kill the animal cleanly or you live in the alaskan wilderness or in the mountains of Appalachia, and hunt for subsistence that is another matter.

If you are hunting inside a larger management context (say that the deer population regularly overshoots its carrying capacity because back in the early 20th century we wiped out all the wolves and bears) then that is another matter and sport hunting can ethically take place in that context (fixing our mistakes )

But there is a difference, calculated along multiple lines of ethical thought, that shows that there is a difference between the killing of domestic animals and the killing of wild ones.

[haard]

I agree that there is a difference between game and domestic animals, but I'd argue that game is the moral choice - live free die fast versus live in a box, get transported in a box (and maybe trapled to death, or 'just' mauled), and killed. While the kill is clean, the conditions before and especially during transports are often abysmal.

Large-scale meat producing is seldom a pretty sight, since they (have to?) focus on cheap meat, and the animals suffer. That being said, small-scale meat producing farms is probably the happiest meat you can eat =)

[Zwinmar]

I find this sicking, not that they are hunting bears, thats not my problem, my problem is that they are not useing the carcass.

Do I hunt, yep sure do. However, I use the meat for sustinance, meaning, I eat it.

When I lived in Ny we were given a bear tag along with deer tags.

What it comes down to is that most of the people I know, yes hunt for the sport, however, It is my opinion that if you hunt, you eat what you shoot. If you only wound an animal, you track it down even if it takes all day and many miles.

Hunting for just the skins is just...wrong.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I agree that there is a difference between game and domestic animals, but I'd argue that game is the moral choice - live free die fast versus live in a box, get transported in a box (and maybe trapled to death, or 'just' mauled), and killed. While the kill is clean, the conditions before and especially during transports are often abysmal.

Large-scale meat producing is seldom a pretty sight, since they (have to?) focus on cheap meat, and the animals suffer. That being said, small-scale meat producing farms is probably the happiest meat you can eat =)

I certainly agree, large scale factory farming needs to go. Of course I can make the argument that killing the farmed cow and eating it is more moral than hunting. If only because one person will not stop the conditions (and neither will society) that lead to the factory farming and thus killing the animal for food in the end, is a mercy. But that may be my cynicism coming through